Public Policy Polling (PPP) released a poll [pdf] today of 632 Missouri voters taken from September 9th through the 12th. The margin of error is 3.9%. This being crazy times, the race is close. Then again, it is a long time to November 2012.

…PPP is a Democratic polling company, but polling expert Nate Silver of the New York Times found that its surveys in 2010 actually exhibited a slight bias toward Republican candidates…

More on that later.

Some of the top line results:

43% approve of McCaskill’s work in Washington, down from 46% four months ago. The same 47% disapprove. Among the 87 senators on which PPP has polled, only one of the 23 Democrats on the ballot next year has a worse standing-Nebraska’s Ben Nelson.

But for now at least, McCaskill leads three Republicans running to replace her. She tops former State Treasurer Sarah Steelman, 43-42, down from 45-42 in the previous poll. McCaskill also edges Rep. Todd Akin, 45-43, versus 46-45 in May. And she leads businessman John Brunner, 46-37, up from 47-41.

This is an interesting aspect of the sample:

Q8 Who did you vote for President in 2008?

John McCain…………………………………………… 48%

Barack Obama………………………………………… 45%

Someone else/Don’t remember …………………. 7%

This is what actually happened in 2008:

Official Election Returns

State of Missouri General Election  – 2008 General Election

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

As announced by the Board of State Canvassers

on Tuesday, December 02, 2008

U.S. President And Vice President   Precincts Reporting 3532 of 3532

  John McCain, Sarah Palin REP 1,445,814 49.4%

  Barack Obama, Joe Biden DEM 1,441,911 49.3%

  Bob Barr, Wayne A. Root LIB 11,386 .4%

  Chuck Baldwin, Darrell Castle CST 8,201 .3%

  Ralph Nader, Matt Gonzalez IND 17,813 .6%

  Cynthia McKinney, Rosa Clemente WI 80 .0%

Total Votes   2,925,205

[emphasis added]

This could mean that Democratic voters have left the state, that republican voter suppression efforts are taking a toll, that Democratic voters don’t answer the phone, that Democratic voters by a larger margin forgot who the voted for, or all of the above and maybe more. Or, maybe, there’s a slight republican bias to the poll.

There are some interesting crosstabulations:

McCaskill Approval

Very liberal

Approve 84%

Disapprove 10%

Not sure 6%

Somewhat liberal

Approve 74%

Disapprove 16%

Not sure 10%

Moderate

Approve 61%

Disapprove 28%

Not sure 11%

Somewhat conservative

Approve 22%

Disapprove 66%

Not sure 13%

Very conservative

Approve 9%

Disapprove 84%

Not sure 7%

Those very conservative voters don’t like Claire McCaskill at all. Anyone think they’ll vote for her?:

McCaskill/Akin

Very liberal

Claire McCaskill 89%

Todd Akin 2%

Undecided 9%

Somewhat liberal

Claire McCaskill 79%

Todd Akin 16%

Undecided 5%

Moderate

Claire McCaskill 67%

Todd Akin 19%

Undecided 14%

Somewhat conservative

Claire McCaskill 21%

Todd Akin 64%

Undecided 15%

Very conservative

Claire McCaskill 8%

Todd Akin 82%

Undecided 10%

Nope, those very conservative voters ain’t gonna vote for Claire. But, what’s this? 16% of “somewhat liberal” voters say they’re going to vote for Rep. Todd Aiken (r), arguably the most rabid right wingnut in the Missouri congressional delegation? That’s crazy talk. This is either a bad sample, or Claire has pissed of a significant portion of the base. Any guesses?

By the way, neither Sarah Steelman (r) nor John Brunner (r) do as well with “somewhat liberal” voters as Todd Aiken (r).

There is a gender gap in Claire McCaskill’s (D) approval:

McCaskill Approval

Woman

Approve 46%

Disapprove 39%

Not sure 15%

Man

Approve 40%

Disapprove 55%

Not sure 5%

Uh, the men have made up their minds it would seem. Women could make a significant difference in this election.

“….Claire McCaskill continues to look extremely vulnerable for reelection,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “But it bodes well for her that even at a low time for her party she’s running slightly ahead of her opposition. She might be able to hang on if Democrats see any improvement in their position over the next year….”

Word.

It’s about jobs. I wonder why no one thought of that before. Oh, right. They did.

Take look at this photo over at FiredUp! of Huey, Dewey and Louie … er, ex-senator Kit Bond, Senator Roy Blunt and wanna-be senator, Rep. Todd Akin (R-2). FiredUp!‘s Shannon implies that Bond and Blunt may have decided to make do with Akin as the best potential candidate the Missouri GOP can hustle up to run against Claire McCaskill next year.  

Shannon makes no bones about her assumption that potential Akin challenger, John Brunner, just isn’t ready for prime time, and I personally can’t see two such cagey movers-and-shakers as Bond and Blunt extending much of a welcome to “loose cannon” Sarah Steelman unless they are forced to do it. This leaves them having to grin-and-bear radical fringe-winger Akin.

On the surface, Christian dominionist Akin seems to be a world apart from two fat-cat Republicans like Bond and Blunt. Of course, the two senate veterans are also realists, and Akin’s ability to see socialism in a grain of sand is not really that incompatible with their ultimate goals as servants of the corporatocracy. The ideological extremes have actually proven to be rather useful in that regard as the Koch Brothers’ utilization of the über Tea Party group, Americans for Prosperity, demonstrated during the fight over health care reform.

There is another dimension to the formation of this convivial threesome as well.  Greg Sargent gets it right when he remarks about last night’s GOP Tea Party primary debate that:

… the GOP keeps spinning farther and farther from the general election median voter every week. And, in many cases, reality – do these folks really believe that the biggest economic problem today is runaway inflation? That Americans are desperate to rid themselves of Social Security? That policies enacted by Barack Obama and the Democrats in 2009 (whatever you think of those policies) caused a recession that began in 2007? That “exceptionalism” is the beginning and end of foreign policy? I know, one expects rhetoric that plays to the audience, and I’m sure that most of these positions and the rhetoric that goes with it is carefully polled and focus-grouped (as well it should be). And that’s the real story here: The audience has been trained by Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and the rest of that squad – and therefore a careful, cautious, Republican presidential candidate who is perfectly well-versed in the issues, solidly conservative in the tradition of Ronald Reagan, and knows exactly what he or she needs to do to win the Republican nomination is going to sound like a nut half the time.

The lunatic rightward drift of the GOP is just as true at the state level. Old time realists and money men like Bond and Blunt can read the writing on the wall as well as anybody, and have probably just decided that now is the time to take a deep breath, relax, and embrace their totally nutty inner GOP child, and if that means indulging folks like Akin when they throw tantrums about various species of evil-doers and the flaming, big-government socialists out to destroy Western civilization, so be it.